"And I'm already missing the summer..."

  

                "Oh the bitter winds are coming in
             
                And I'm already missing the summer"
                                         
                    -Emmylou by First Aid Kit

Hair dyeing party!

That's how my summer started; with a hair dyeing party.

June was the "Lightsaber Choreography Days."

We went to our friends' house multiple times a week from 10am-5pm working on fight choreography for our LCC entry.
The choreography days worked like this:  I would wake up, quickly eat breakfast, change clothes, and we would go to Safeway on the way to our friends' house and I would buy a to-go salad, a Cliff bar, and a Starbucks Frappuccino, then we got to business. :)

A goofy moment during the day.

I love this picture. Everyone else is being all serious and working hard and then there's me with someone's shirt on my  head. 

At the end of June, my grandparents came to visit for 10 days and they got to come to the July 4th party with our friends. I was glad that our grandparents were finally getting to meet our Washington friends after a year of hearing about them.

The Poling family singing for everyone.

We got to business and had a water fight with water balloons, hoses, buckets of water, water guns, etc!

Here's my dad throwing a water balloon at Matt, my brother.

Things calmed down a for a minute, but then we all went back to pouring water on each other.

Our community of friends.

While we all waited for the sun to go down, everyone visited.

Fireworks!

I think this picture is really cool!

When we went through all the fireworks, we opened all the glowsticks and sparklers.

During our grandparents' visit, we went to Mt. Rainier, XXX Root beer, and Snoqualmie Falls. 

Mt. Rainier. 

XXX Root beer drive-in.

Snoqualmie Falls.

We went to a few other places with our grandparents, which I can't remember really well because most of the time I was in bed with what we believe was pneumonia.

When our grandparents left and I was on the mend, we got back to work with choreography:

Choreography (10am-5pm), book meetings (7pm-11pm), script meetings with the Johnsons (7pm-11pm), happened weekly, and then we had location scouts, movie day with our friends, a dance night, we had friends over for a fun day, then we had a photo-shoot for our LCC project, and finally, the film days.

We would wake up at 6am to pack our lunches and get ready, be at the Polings' house at 7am, do makeup and hair, then leave for our film location at 8:30am. At 9:30 or 10 we would start filming until 5pm, and then go back to the Polings' house for almost an hour before we went home for dinner.

                                                                 Choreography photos:

Here, they are doing a quick test. 

Last day of choreography. They were asking me when it was time for lunch. ;)

Photo-shoot for LCC (the first time the actors put on their full costume and did their hair and makeup:

Getting their costumes dirty by having a "dirt bath."

How they look in the movie.

Non LCC stuff:

We went to see Inside Out with the Johnsons, which was a lot of fun!  

The Marshalls came over for a few hours before we had our photo-shoot at the Polings'. The girls were doing their hair and nails, and I played Xbox with Noah.

Book meeting. Where Kathryn reads her story to us and we critique it.

Shooting days:

Morgan getting her hair ready.

Lizzy getting a bruise applied.

Eye makeup.

Annie talking to me and Noah about how we could work better together as the director and assistant director.

Hectic makeup and hair moment.

Good guy and bad guy helping each other with their costumes. :)

Matt.

Lizzy checking to see if Matt's "dirt" is applied evenly.

Matt getting "dirt" applied.

Morgan getting her hair teased.

Loading up all the film gear, about to leave.

                           9 AM. Walking to film location and setting the first scene of the day up:

Walking to our location.

Yep, that's me; the short, red head in the sweater... Pulling the mini wagon. :)

Base camp.

What an actress does when she's not in a scene. lol! :)

The picture below was the last shooting day. Well, we thought it was, but the next month we had to film pickup shots.

While this was happening ^^, mom and dad were at the airport picking Ashley and Matt up:

Ashley and Matt...and a random lady with a massive Starbucks coffee. lol!

Ashley, Matt, Mom, and Dad came on set to see us film for a little while, but left about an hour later.

Less than two hours later we finished filming and we headed back to the Polings' house where there was a lot of clapping and whooping and Noah gave his "inspirational speech." 

Okay, there is a story to that. See, when the Marshalls came to our house before the photo-shoot, I jokingly said to Noah, "Lizzy wants you and me to write inspirational speeches because we're the director and assistant director." I thought he knew I was kidding. And as they were leaving our house I said, "Don't forget that inspirational speech!" 

And Noah was like, "Oh yeah. When does Lizzy need that again?" 

Me: "Tomorrow." 

I thought he knew I was joking, but when they left I was like, "Hm...I don't think he knew I was joking." 

Later that night I asked him if he knew I was kidding and he didn't know.

We all laughed a good bit about that, and for the next few days we joked about the "inspirational speeches" Noah and I were going to give.

On the last day of shooting it was brought up again and Noah stood up and gave a speech. :) 

When we got back from the Polings' I was really happy and bursting to tell every last detail about the day (because I had, had a blast), but Ashley and Matt were finally at our house visiting, so we wanted to visit with them and hear about their flight and so on. :) 

I don't know what's up with my hair. ;)

The next day, everyone went to Deep Lake to celebrate Morgan's birthday (which was in two days). 

I look so confused with the world. XD

This was my schedule for the month. 

Where it says "Polings'" that was code for, "Fight Choreography."

Oh, and our grandparents were not here on the 8th and 9th. They drove up to Port Angeles, but were back on the 10th. :)

August: 

Ashley and Matt were here the first week of August  and we did a lot of stuff with them, which I covered in this blog post HERE.

Since I already did a blog post about August, I'll just post pictures in place of description. :)

We've been making mini movies with the Johnsons.

I would post more of the Johnson movie pictures, but I don't know if some people would approve of some of the pics. :) ;) 

Another day of shooting our LCC entry. (Total numbers of days we filmed: 5)

I've had more Starbucks this summer than I have ever had in my life...and I'm okay with that. ;) 

I don't know what store this is at, I just know it's in the Tacoma Mall.

Sarah has been very nice, letting me ride her horse, Scarlett. I missed riding.

We had a movie night with the Johnsons which involved a lot of popcorn and some cookies. We watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean. :) 

We also had a movie night with the Marshalls and Swets which involved a lot of popcorn, and Micah giving me a cooking lesson on how to pop popcorn in a pot....which I burned.



My family went to Dash Point Park for a day and we found tons of sand dollars!

Trust me, this is not all that we found. :)

September...So far: 

Dad took me, Morgan, and Yuliya to Pizza Hut

The Polings invited everyone to a Labor Day BBQ where there was some dancing and a lot of talking.

I'm in the front.

Talking to Kathryn about video games. I'm acting like I have a PS4 controller in my hand. lol!

Red Solo Cup. ;) 

The Johnsons came over for another movie night. But we didn't watch the movie until Daniel arrived, which was two hours later...so in those two hours all of us girls plus Matt went on a walk, and made a spur-of-the-moment Safeway trip to buy brownies and ice cream. When we went back home, we popped three bags of popcorn and made the brownies.  Daniel arrived soon after and we started the movie. (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace). 

 I don't have any pictures, but dad won free tickets to the Toby Mac/Chris Tomlin concert at work, and he took us girls plus Anna and Callah to the concert/Puyallup Fair this Sunday. We had a lot of fun! 
 I didn't ride any of the fair rides because:

1. I don't enjoy fair rides...I just don't find them fun. :(
2. Some rides make me sick. :-/
So while everyone else rode the rides, I stood on the sidelines and watched.


On Monday, the Johnsons came over and Matt read the first finished draft of our zombie movie out loud.


Yesterday Sarah invited me to go with her to the horse barn to ride Scarlett. That was a lot of fun, even though my thighs are a little sore from the sitting trot. :)
Yesterday was also our writing "class" at the Polings'. That's something else we've been doing with some of our friends. It's where we bring any writing that we have to the Polings' house, and Kathryn reads it out loud. She gives us grammar corrections and teaches about writing/grammar. :) 


Today is the first day of fall! The weather has completely changed here in Washington. It's really cold in the mornings, then warms up a little bit during the day! 
I really hope the weather stays this way this week, because my grandma is coming to visit us from GA! In a few hours she'll be on an airplane headed up here! :) 
Anyway, again, today is the first day of fall. That means summer 2015 is already over.
I wrote what I did this summer, but I didn't write my thoughts on this summer, so here we go:


This summer has been incredibly, incredibly busy and super fun. It's also been very educational in more ways than one. 
I've learned a whole lot about being A.D and how to work better as team. I've learned a lot about our friends and our relationships have grown in a big way. My relationship with all of our friends before the LCC project was completely different from what they are now. I can't wait until we have a new project that will make us all grow even closer together. :)

There were moments during the summer that were a little tough, but I can hardly remember the tough moments because all the fun and good memories overwrite the tough ones. :) 


I hope you all had a great summer also, and happy fall! :)

Lauryn G.